


alive together

by sinagtala (strikinglight)



Series: kiss prompts [2]
Category: Persona 3, Persona Series
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Long-Distance Friendship, Post-Canon, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 07:29:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12700230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/sinagtala
Summary: I’m glad you’re going,Akihiko had said. She still remembers his face as he said it, with his eyes to the skyline, and the lights twinkling yellow-orange on his head and shoulders. All these things so clear it’s as if she said goodbye to them only yesterday.You should have... more than this.





	alive together

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by Jen, for prompt #2: "kiss on the cheek." I most like my Akimitsus toeing the friendship/love line, so I tried to make this as open as possible in that regard.
> 
> Also the fact that Akihiko says "Amazing as always!" whenever Mitsuru crits or downs an enemy has been murdering me since 2007.

She has few small caprices even here, and when she really thinks about it, she can name only two that she wouldn’t give up if pressed. The first is the motorcycle she signed for, second only to the lease on her apartment. The second is the pride she takes in finding her own way.

Of course, propriety continues to matter, so she allows herself to be chauffeured to and from the university, to and from important meetings. She exchanges courteous air-kisses with executives, dabs perfume at her wrists and behind her ears, shows up to all her classes ten minutes early. But two days each week, at least, are for her and for the River Seine, for chasing the wind along the banks with no particular destination in mind. That she chooses to spend most of her weekends alone, barring the need to close a deal or attend a function, continues to be cause for dismay among company advisers and affiliate foreign executives alike. _You are young and beautiful, Mitsuru, beautiful as this city of ours, and surely, surely—_

She’s too mindful of her manners to tell them that, beautiful though the city unquestionably is—Paris in the spring, blooming and perfumed, parts of it rose-tinted down to the very light itself—she’ll always know it first in memory by the smell of wet stones and motor oil.

_Merci. Merci. No, thank you. I will see you on Monday._

Some Sundays it’s enough to just ride and ride. Today she parks the bike on the shoulder and wanders out to the riverbank with her helmet tucked under one arm, in the shadow of a bridge whose name she hasn’t yet memorized. There is such an abundance of bridges here, and the water’s rushing echoes round and round under every arch, cradled by the stone. Always she’s aware of the way the Seine flows, carrying its barges and its tourist boats northwest toward the sea; she smiles ruefully when she remembers that she needs to face upstream, against the current, to gaze in the direction of home.

 _I’m glad you’re going,_ Akihiko had said. She still remembers his face as he said it, with his eyes to the skyline, and the lights twinkling yellow-orange on his head and shoulders. All these things so clear it’s as if she said goodbye to them only yesterday. _You should have... more than this._

It’s funny to think about how on their last night at the dorm she had taken him for a ride to a different bridge. It had been spring then too, the days just beginning to thaw, the nights a little pointed still. He’d gotten a coffee from a roadside vending machine for them to share, passing the can back and forth and listening to the elevated train scream over the bay, standing together wordlessly like Mitsuru knows she’s never stood with anyone since. She’d wrinkled her nose at the scent of it—bitter and earthy, and underneath that somehow metallic—and he grinned.

_Well, what about you? Have you set your things in order?_

His mouth twisted, crooked and wry, as he nudged her shoulder with his own. _Like half, maybe._

He had taken to touching her more often, those final days—though this, too, is something she’s only realized in retrospect, something that she might never even have thought about had she not noticed the peculiar gap left by its absence. A hand on her back as she made her way down the front steps of the dorm. Fingers curved around her elbow at a street crossing, or around her hand holding a half-finished can of bad coffee, still warm. Lips pressed against her cheek, also still warm.

And here, now, Mitsuru leans against the wind, and tips her head back to breathe more deeply, and she sees him well enough. She thinks of him bending toward her, all awkward angles and sweat and that scorched smell of lightning touching the earth. Someone to stand beside, not so distant as she imagined, setting out.

_You’re gonna be amazing._

_As always, you mean,_ she’d said. And he had laughed.

_As always._


End file.
